That describes the first week of March 2016, with temperatures at Palm Beach International Airport running 1.6 degrees above normal and a precipitation shortfall of almost an inch.

With strong east-southeast winds, nighttime temperatures will be holding in the low 70s this week, according to the National Weather Service. That’s about 10 degrees above normal for this time of the year. Highs should be in the upper 70s.

So there’s a good chance that the first half of the month will go into the books as warm and dry, a welcome respite from the stormy days of January and February. In fact, the Climate Prediction Center is now forecasting below normal rainfall in South Florida through March 21.

The National Weather Service in Miami released the chart above showing just how wet things were during the meteorological winter of December, January and February. (Astronomical spring begins on Sunday, March 20 at 12:30 EDT.)

In an average winter, PBIA has 23 days with precipitation of at least 0.01 of an inch. This meteorological winter there were 38, a 65 percent increase.

There is still a question about weather this weekend with the two main forecast models — NOAA’s GFS and the European model (ECMWF) — at odds over the local impact of a storm system in the Midwest. The GFS delivers more rain to South Florida than the ECMWF, forecasters said, but for now the are favoring the latter and have put weekend rain chances at 20-30 percent.

AccuWeather is calling for 0.16 of an inch of rain in Palm Beach on Saturday and Sunday. Weather Underground is forecasting 0.17 of an inch followed by a wind direction change from southeast to southwest, which could crank temperatures in Palm Beach up into the mid-80s early next week.

Forecast rainfall through Tuesday, March 15. (Credit: NOAA/ WPC)

NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center is forecasting that southwestern Louisiana. north into Arkansas, Missouri and southern Illinois, will get hammered with rain and possible severe weather this week. More than 11 inches of rain are forecast for Louisiana.

South Florida would be largely spared under this scenario.

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The temperature map was awash in red during the winter of 2015-2016. (Credit: NOAA)

UPDATE: The contiguous U.S. had its warmest winter on record, NOAA said today. Temperatures were 4.6 degrees above the 20th century average. Alaska had its second warmest winter on record. All South Florida reporting sites — West Palm Beach, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Naples — had above average temperatures for the winter season, which encompasses December through February. Naples had its 10th warmest winter.

However, that was mostly on the strength of a record warm December. January and February were cooler than normal.

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HURRICANE HISTORY: The Caribbean Sea had a 70-year lull in hurricane activity from 1645 to 1715 due to limited sunspot activity and cool temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, researchers said in a study announced Monday. The first-of-its-kind research looked at shipwreck data combined with tree ring data.

The researchers, from the University of Arizona, used books detailing wrecks of ships coming and going from Spain to the Caribbean from 1495 to 1825 and combined it with tree ring data from the Florida Keys. They found that the hurricane lull corresponded to a downturn in solar energy.

National Hurricane Center records only date back to 1850, so the study provides an additional three centuries of information on Caribbean hurricane activity.